Day 31: What’s your post-NaNoWriMo plan? Writing habits. Let’s assume that you can get through the next thirty days in once piece and make it to the finish line. When you finish, what is the next step for the manuscript? First things first, you should continue writing until you finish. Seriously. Do you think you’ll be able to continue at the same pace? If not, what adjustments do you plan to make to balance writing with end-of-semester and/or holiday obligations? If you do finish in fifty thousand words or less, you’ll want to evaluate for...

Day 30: Do you want to create a scene tracker? Story and setting. If an outline is the macro level of your plot, the scene tracker allows you to delve into greater detail on a scene-by-scene basis. Again, you may not need or want one, but you may find it useful to think of scenes in their component parts as you write your way through NaNo. You’ll want to have your outline handy for this, but you can also apply it just to the scenes you know you have even if you don’t have all of them yet. Action Plan: Fill out a scene tracker (such as this one or this...

Day 29: Do you want to write an outline? Story and setting. We’ve covered a lot of major topics in the last month, but how do we combine these disparate story ingredients into a recipe for a novel? For some people, the ingredients are enough on their own. They like the adventure of mixing them together on the fly to see what they come up with. By not defining everything beforehand, they have a lot more creative liberty during the drafting phase and avoid the pressure of writing according to a specific plan or formula. In NaNo land, we call these people...

Day 28: What are your NaNoWriMo contingency plans? Writing habits. Life happens. We all know this. But do you know how you’ll cope with life happening during NaNoWriMo so you don’t end up regretting anything? Some days the writing comes more slowly than others. Other days an emergency arises at work or home. Or perhaps you know in advance you’re not going to be able to write one day. Suddenly, 1,667 words per day is looking more like 2,000 plus. Today’s the day you come up with Plan B. Action Plan: Try to build in to your November writing schedule...

Day 27: What does your protagonist regret most and why? Your Protagonist. We all go through life harboring regrets about things we’ve done or left undone. Your protagonist is no exception. What sorts of things do they regret about their life so far? What are the stories behind each regret? Do the nature of these regrets change by the midpoint of the novel or after the climax, when additional information might have come to light? How intensely do they feel the regret, and do the regreats factor in to the protagonist’s desires/motives or their M.O.? Action...

Triple Crit is a blog for storytellers of all sorts, be they behind the GM screen, keyboard, or character sheet. Here you can find articles and advice on campaign management, adventure design, character development, writing, and geek culture.

The author, Katrina Ostrander, is a twenty-something gamer chick, game master, and blogger working in the tabletop games industry for Fantasy Flight Games. In addition to her work as an editor of tie-in fiction, she has worked on nearly a dozen roleplaying game adventures and supplements. Her opinions are her own.